<p>This may be a really stupid question but...</p>
<p>So MIT is known for technology, UC San Diego is supposedly good for engineering, Northwestern has a great journalism program, Sarah Lawrence is great for writing, Carnegie Mellon is great for computer science...</p>
<p>What makes certain schools "good" for certain programs over others? What makes the computer science program, for instance, at Carnegie Mellon better than the one at Northwestern or at any random college? Is it faculty, prestige...what is it?</p>
<p>It’s a loop</p>
<p>Prestige leads to people thinking it’s good which leads to more people applying and higher quality faculty being attracted and more employers hiring and lower acceptance rates which leads to prestige which leads to more people applying/attracted faculty/hiring employers which leads to prestige…</p>
<p>Haha just kidding (sort of), I think it’s some combination of career placement, quality of the students that attend, quality of faculty, amount of prizewinning students, what the students do after graduation, how well known the school is, facilities, what kinds of resources they have (e.g. I know carnegie mellon went up in CS rankings after they got a new CS building)</p>
<p>Prestige and actual quality certainly form a positive feedback loop.</p>